Mario Draghi

Mario Draghi (Italian: [ˈmaːrjo ˈdraːɡi]; born 3 September 1947) is an Italian politician, economist, academic, banker, statesman, and civil servant, who served as the prime minister of Italy from 13 February 2021 to 22 October 2022. Prior to his appointment as prime minister, he served as the president of the European Central Bank (ECB) between 2011 and 2019. Draghi was also the chair of the Financial Stability Board between 2009 and 2011, and governor of the Bank of Italy between 2006 and 2011.

After working as an economist, Draghi worked for the World Bank in Washington, D.C., throughout the 1980s, and in 1991 returned to Rome to become director general of the Italian Treasury. He left that role after a decade to join Goldman Sachs, where he remained until his appointment as governor of the Bank of Italy in 2006. His tenure as Governor coincided with the 2008 Great Recession, and in the midst of this he was selected to become the first chair of the Financial Stability Board, the global standard-setter that replaced the Financial Stability Forum.

He left those roles after his nomination by the European Council in 2011 to serve as president of the ECB. He presided over the institution during the Eurozone crisis, becoming famous throughout Europe for saying that he would be prepared to do "whatever it takes" to prevent the euro from failing. In 2014, Draghi was listed by Forbes as the eighth-most powerful person in the world. In 2015, Fortune magazine ranked him as the world's "second greatest leader". He is also the only Italian to be listed three times in the Time 100 annual listicle. In 2019, Paul Krugman described him as "the greatest central banker of modern times." Moreover, thanks to his monetary policies, he is widely considered the "saviour of the euro" during the Euro area crisis. He has been nicknamed Super Mario by some media, a nickname that was popularised during his time as president of the ECB, when he was credited by numerous sources as having played a key role in combatting the Eurozone crisis.